


Long Kiss Goodbye

by holmesfreak1412



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, daughter!OC, yakuza!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holmesfreak1412/pseuds/holmesfreak1412
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Yakuza world full of blood, violence and scheming, Ty Lee becomes Azula's only refuge. Written for Tyzula week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One: Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Written for the Autumn Tyzula Week in the Tyzula Renaissance Forum organized by electric gurll. As well as taking the Yakuza AU from the Prompt Thread. We don't have autumn here where I live but we have typhoons and I guess the endless rain makes me compulsive enough to continue ficcing. I have a very strange writing style (blame my lack of proper schooling) but it seems to be particularly apparent in this.

**001 Luck**

Ty Lee's first love is like luck, waning and unpredictable. It is meant to be, wonderful in its briefness. And it eventually ran out. Azula dropped out of middle school very soon before Ty Lee lost the will to continue her own education and took the same path. Ever since then, their encounters were prompted only by mere chances, by Lady Luck smiling at her for a second before taking it all away again.

"Aren't I the lucky one today?" She hears the saccharine charm of a purr two years later, in a casino that paid her rent and fed her at least once a day. The ramen stand takes care of the rest of the expenses and whatever guilty pleasures she might have would sometimes be quenched by a hefty tip in a lucky night. Sixteen-year old Azula is winning and the die is hers to cast once more. "Running away suits you Ty Lee." She feels more self conscious in her waitress garb even if the underhanded compliment is not something she heard the first time. Azula wins a million for the night. Ty Lee is left with a grand after the sex.

Three more years pass and Ty Lee still thinks that the kisses, the touch, the fire that burns and the ashes left once she wakes up with Azula gone is just luck even if it happens every month, in every new job she takes. "This is my calling." She tells her when Azula suddenly appears in her dressing room after her ballet recital. She does not know how she got in but being the daughter and heir apparent of the city's crime lord must have its perks.

Azula rolls her eyes, scoffs at the answer that she hears everytime. She does not ask anymore but Ty Lee tells her anyway. This time though, instead of fucking straight against the wall, Azula replies back. "I am your calling."

And perhaps she is. Perhaps, Ty Lee has many a time wished that their illicit meetings, their forbidden romance, the one night stands she likes to think more of, would eventually produce a golden-eyed child with wavy brown locks. But they have no such luck. Because luck has nothing to do with it. She thinks past the impossibility of such reproduction, the doomed nature of their unnatural union for those are immaterial in face of what really is the matter. Because even if one of them had been born a male, Azula would still be gone the next morning. "What am I to you?"

She puts a finger between their lips. Azula's eyes widen. "What kind of question is that?" is all she blurts out and Ty Lee knows then, without pursuing the subject that she does not have that kind of luck to fall and stay in love.

Two years came by and went. A nameless man leaves his seed in Ty Lee's and she does not mind. Azula has departed to make a name for herself in the underworld. She becomes the city's famous secret, the oxymoron fitting her baffling existence. The bond that bound Ty Lee to her that does not make any sense becomes strong in every news item that she is not mentioned and yet her presence lingered like the ash of her cigarette. A suspicious suicide by a self-righteous politician is Azula's murder to Ty Lee. She whispered sin in her ears when they were together but like every life that she takes without mercy, this does not matter to Azula.

Azula appears on TV, impeccable and as a CEO's promising daughter. "The most influential young woman in the country." They all say but the darkness in her eyes is the only thing that Ty Lee sees. She touches her protruding stomach when she feels the telltale ache in her chest.

"You were knocked up." Is her first remark to her in two long years. She does not sound jealous, offended, miffed. Just curious. Ty Lee heaves panicked breaths in the backseat, curls her fists as the pain methodically tears her insides apart. She mutters a soundless scream. Inside, her mind finally processes the luck of meeting someone who is willing to take a pregnant woman to the hospital in the cutthroat city of busy men in suits who all have a meeting in under ten minutes. The sensation of falling back to familiar eyes. The beautiful sight of golden orbs.

"I am her..." Azula speaks to the doctor with the ease of a diplomat. And it surprises her how the girl she thought to not care about her knows about her birthday, her address, everything that even her parents did not bother to remember. "I am a good friend."

It was luck when they saw each other again in that restaurant, when of all people, of all times, Ty Lee was given a chance not to go through the ordeal of giving birth alone. She does not expect what happens next. But for the first time in their unacknowledged relationship, in her once unrequited love, Azula has stayed with her until the next morning.

"Who is the father?"

"It does not matter." Because this is her child. It does not have to be someone else's too for them to see their worth.

"What are you going to name her?" Azula sounds interested, eager. She touches the baby girl's cheek. Hesitantly at first. And when the girl cooes softly and does not flinch, she gains courage. For a moment, Ty Lee can imagine that the three of them are a family and Azula is not a Yakuza Princess who breaks attachments as easily as she makes them and that she gave birth to a child with golden eyes.

"She is born lucky." Ty Lee mutters. She places a kiss on the baby's forehead. "Yoshino."

"Child of good luck." She thinks that this is the first time she saw Azula smile. "Fitting."

When Azula comes back the next day and stays, Ty Lee starts to think that this may be fate and not luck after all.

**(TBC)**


	2. Day Two: Sleepwalking

**002 Sleepwalking**

The following years with Azula feels like walking in a dream.

"Who is my daddy?" Two-year old Yoshino is a precocious child spoilt rotten by her rich weekly visitor who also happened to be her mommy's longtime girlfriend. Azula brought gifts from every corner of the world her missions take her to. Azula calls them errands. Ty Lee is inclined to address it in its more dangerous reality. None of those presents are dolls.

"Does it matter?" Azula says. She is frowning, looking displeased. Ty Lee hopes that like everything else, Yoshino would think that her auntie would just be kidding. Like when mommy plays dead and pretends to be a dragon. Azula is never one for those roleplay games, even when they were children but impressionable two-year-olds should not be able to take inherent harshness seriously. The toddler, thankfully only giggles at the scowl. "You already have two mothers."

"Cool!" The child exclaims with glee. She munches on her chocolates, happily oblivious. Ty Lee's heart flutters against her will as Azula carefully dislodges the girl from her embrace and takes a call in the other room. She does not hear even a snippet of the conversation but she realizes instantly what it is all about when Azula bids an early goodbye with a hasty retreat and a quick high five to her daughter. She is gone before Ty Lee could wish for her safety. For the rest of the day, Yoshino revels about finally being allowed to call her Auntie Azula "Mother".

"Why wouldn't Mother stay?" is Yoshino's question when Ty Lee tucks her to bed that night. She learned quickly. Perhaps, it sounds and feels natural enough. Ty Lee reaches for the switch of the lampshade , hesitating at the inquisitive look in those wide, brown eyes—she does not have to imagine it is gold anymore- before relenting and sighing an uncertain response.

"She does not have to."

"But you two are my mothers." She observes. Yoshino does not have gold eyes. Yoshino does not have the same aristocratic features that will sharpen over time. But in these moments that the two-year-old girl shows a brilliance preceded only by the woman she adored so much, Yoshino becomes Azula's daughter too as much as Ty Lee's. "And you should live together, hmmm?"

Perhaps their relationship has turned further than secret meetings and bathroom hook-ups. Perhaps Azula now stays for coffee and actually says goodbye. Perhaps Azula is back again in her life, mostly because she is in the same country as Ty Lee once more. But Ty Lee does not know, does not understand why she stays and why Ty Lee lets her. Ty Lee does not know why she lets herself hope through such false promises.

"She does not have to." is her murmur to herself. Yoshino does not take it as an answer because she herself forgot that she asked a question. The girl yawns and Ty Lee does not resist the fond smile from breaking out. "Now, now, a good girl goes to sleep early." She has early kindergarten duty the next day. It pays better than the casino on an hourly basis but parents do not exactly leave tips for a job well done.

"I can give you a job." Azula impatiently suggests when Ty Lee adamantly refused her help for the hydro bill. The rent was taken care of. And they have enough in the fridge to last them a week. But a frugal menu is hardly acceptable for an heiress who owns half the city. Azula is sitting crosslegged in the patio as Yoshino scales on her knees with a fiery determination she totally got from Ty Lee. Ty Lee wonders if this early, almost unhealthy fixation to dark-haired, golden-eyed elegance is inherited as well. Ty Lee cannot bear to discourage her own daughter from it. "You can work for my company. As my secretary."

"But then that means I would be closer to them. My family." Her life as one of her parent's matched set is a life she has ran away from. To this day, she does not have regrets. She knows of their connections to the underworld, the unethical drugs they make for the Organization. She does not want to be part of that world anymore. And yet she kisses, touches, fucks Azula everytime she wants to take a break from their syndicate. Ty Lee recognizes her own hypocrisy. It is not appreciated. "I don't want that."

Loving Azula becomes a dream she is living in, a fantasy she never thought would be fulfilled. When the three of them share meals, it is perfect. When Yoshino first steps into day care, it is Azula who grasps her shoulders and gives her the encouragement that she needs. "You can do it." Their life together is perfect. Azula is perfect. But she leaves every night and Ty Lee would spend each passing day with her worrying that she would not return.

Each successful assassination of a shady politician, each contraband shipment that is not intercepted. Ty Lee watches the news in rapt attention for missions accomplished and in wariness of shortcomings that might cause Azula's freedom. Or her life. When Azula comes back unscathed, Ty Lee would generously allow herself a huge sigh in relief. And Yoshino would leap into arms that never pushed her away.

She could tell that Azula does not want to talk about it. Ty Lee becomes a secret life, a reprieve from the violence that has become her world since she was acknowledged a genius. And in the small smiles that her daughter beams at and the gifts that are more than just monetary offerings, Ty Lee thinks, tries to believe that for now, it is enough.

"Maybe we should get married." Azula suddenly suggests one morning. The two year old is struggling with Flappy Bird and Azula is wearing a small, uncharacteristic smile. Ty Lee realizes that in those three years with the daughter that they tacitly shared, she has always been waiting for Azula to say that. Ty Lee decides that she likes the bright glint of satisfaction in her eyes and she would like to see more of it.

"Sure." She tries her best to sound as halfhearted as Azula did but her much too wide grin betrays her joy. For this is even better.

The best way to remove one's illusions after all, is to make them come true.


	3. Day Three: Divorce

**003 Divorce**

It is one year through their marriage that Ty Lee finally realizes that she was bound to the most dangerous woman in the country. Azula does not hurt her. Azula does not lay a hand on Yoshino. But her obsession for power, her endless ambition is one that will ultimately force her to hurt herself. Ty Lee thinks that though she is there to share the pain, even the resilient bond that survived a decade of estrangement and ambiguity, of disownment and crime would not be able to take the brunt of a blow enhanced with secrecy and cruelty.

"But Azula, you could not just do that. You know it. Those people would die!"

"It was done." She responds coolly. The news of the skyscraper bombing is the household topic. Seven people dead and it does not even include the defector that Azula keeps muttering about. All those wasted lives. All those bereaved. And Azula who pressed the detonator with the abandon of someone who does not care is there seated with her wife during breakfast, clenching her fists over tenacious traitors and his Interpol friends, grits her teeth over the costs of a mission failed.

When in the wake of the rubble and destruction that Azula's wrath and ambition left lay countless lives of innocent people who would never see the sun again.

"But Azula—"

"I have to do this, Ty Lee." She snaps. She stands then and it is when Ty Lee sees something off in Azula's eyes, the unhinged frustration lurking. She has never seen her like this before. She has always been so perfect, so infallible. From the corner of her eye, Ty Lee spies their daughter fleeing to the comforts of her bedroom. "I have to find my brother and I have to kill him."

"Your brother!"

"Don't feign incredulity." Azula grumbles and that look, that look of utter hatred in Azula's eyes is what Ty Lee is glad Yoshino was spared from. She is seized by a sense of foreboding so strong, her joints feel numbed. Azula's nails scratch on the surface. It makes a screeching sound that is almost physically painful to Ty Lee. "You know I should have seen it coming. Zuko always have it in him. That wretch! I'll kill him. I swear, I'll kill him."

Azula will pick up the phone several times in the next few days, always speaking in hushed, hurried tones. She would pace with pronounced stomps all around their abode, prompting Yoshino to worriedly ask her mother about what is going on.

"Nothing!" Her temper has become short, her fuse precariously leaning in its edge. For the first time, Yoshino does what Ty Lee once had done and feared, oh how she feared to do again. She cowers in Azula's presence.

"Azula!" But Ty Lee's admonishment is to no avail.

The reunion with Mai after ten years does not proceed the way Ty Lee wants to. She is dressed in dark colours, heavily clothed in a familiar way that makes Ty Lee aware of the several knives hidden in her person. She has heard of Mai, a reputation that matches even that of Azula's. The assassin has become a key player in underground dealings, a favourite fixture in Azula's way of life. It is the reason why Ty Lee does not regret not seeing her for so long, no matter how close they used to be.

"Your wife wants to kill my husband." Ty Lee is not sure but it is probably then that she sees the most emotion in the once inscrutable woman's eyes. It scares Ty Lee. She is scared for Azula. "Don't expect me to be amiable."

"But Mai, Azula is just—"

"Don't even try to defend her." Her flat emotion, her detached tone does not disguise the thickly-veiled threat.

"Mommy, I'm scared." Yoshino whispers to her one night. Ty Lee can do nothing more but draw the child closer to her arms, knowing that it must pain her like it pained Ty Lee how Azula is slowly drifting away again. Azula was gone the previous morning and has not been back ever since.

"Another bombing." She confronts the irate Azula when she came back. Ty Lee watched the news, as she always did. The atrocity that her wife was involved in is once again in the headlines. She does not want to think of it. She does not want to acknowledge it. But slowly as her desire for power consumes her, Azula has become the monster she tried so hard to avoid being. The woman just shrugs her off. "You derailed a whole train, Azula!"

"It's Zuko's own fault. I just did what I have to do." If Ty Lee had not noticed her wife's blatant lack of remorse before, it is more apparent now as twenty-eight deaths are flashed in the news and Azula does not even blink. "I still need to catch him."

"I want a divorce."

"What?" Her voice is hoarse with surprise.

"I want a divorce." For this is the only way. It hurts. It hurts to say it. But she has to. She has to.

And this is when Ty Lee knows that Azula is too far gone.

She laughs. And laughs. Hysterical. From the corner of her eye, Yoshino vanishes in a blur of purple back to her room. And Azula rakes her fingers through her hair forcefully, shakes her head.

She does not even protest.

"I want to break things off." Ty Lee explains even as Azula stopped listening. The dam breaks. The next thing she knows, she cannot stop herself from sobbing out. "...while I can still say I love you."


	4. Day Four: Theft

**004 Theft**

"Mommy?" Yoshino's hesitant glance is brimming with worry, with the wariness that no child should ever experience, no child should even know. No child should ever see her parent's fighting. No child should ever see a parent leaving. No child should ever see that person she knew to be a mother all this time descend into a stranger she has started to fear. "Are you okay?"

"I am fine, honey. Don't worry." She tries not to sound too dismissive, too evasive. Azula has done more than enough share of omitting things from their daughter. No, her daughter. Ty Lee's. For she is the one who gave birth to her even though for the past six years, Azula has been as big as a figure to Yoshino's life as her biological mother has been. Even though Azula's presence is the only thing that keeps the child asking about a father whose name Ty Lee cannot even recall.

"I miss Mother." Ty Lee does not offer consolation, not even a verbal response knowing full well how futile it is. Because no matter how much she tries to justify it, she is taking away the most important person in her daughter's life.

Even when she is not so recognizable anymore.

The etch, the mark that Azula left in their hearts would not be going away any time soon. She is like a drug, leaving in her wake the tantalizing memories of the yesterday Ty Lee does not want to go back to anymore. She wonders if she will regret this. She wonders how long Azula would be gone from her life before Ty Lee...

"Do you miss her too, Mommy?"

Yoshino adores Azula. The Auntie who allowed herself to be a second mother. The mother who told her to kick ass and eat candy and stay up late even when nitpicky Ty Lee tried to stick to the modicum of good parenting. "It makes her happy." She would mischievously retort everytime Ty Lee quipped about spoilt little girls and her idea of discipline. "You are the best mum in the world." Yoshino would gleefully say in sync with the smirking Azula. She feels a painful churn in her gut. Ironically, Azula is also the one who made her the saddest.

But she has to move on. They have to move on. Even if Azula has not signed the papers. Even if Ty Lee does not even have the courage to call a lawyer to make them. Even if they probably are as much of a prey to be hunted to her as Zuko is because they left in the middle of the night like thieves. The city they moved in is of safe distance from the Capital, carrying with her as much money as she could milk from her own savings. Ty Lee did not go contact the Social Services. Azula is not abusive as a wife in a traditional way. But she has to save Yoshino from the downward spiral that Azula is increasingly becoming.

She would sport no black and blue skin for the authorities to see. But Azula left a hole in her heart that would never be filled no matter how many friends she would make in their new home. And she wonders if this feeling of guilt, this pain in her chest is the punishment that she deserves for loving Azula. She would willingly take it. She would willingly accept it. If providence would take it as atonement for her sins when Azula herself could not repent on it.

For as long as Ty Lee could remember, Azula has always been a part of her life, a constant. That something that always called louder in the sea of persistent voices. So when this time, she is the one who chose to leave, Ty Lee begins to nurse the feeling that she also left a part of herself behind. Or perhaps Azula stole it too, like she seems to steal everything away.

Because this time, the memories are not so pleasant anymore and Ty Lee cannot afford to remember, cannot afford to cherish something so beautiful and yet has been so brief. It is not the goodbye that hurt. It is the flashbacks that follow. She tries to think it is because she never wanted to marry, love a mass murderer. But Azula has always been that way. Those small doses of cruelty she has seen as children had been the first clue to what she would eventually morph into. But up until she saw the blood that Azula nonchalantly stained herself with, she has always forced herself to overlook it.

Azula has been living with lies all her life. People follow her because they fear her. Her father values her because he needs her for his own ends. And Ty Lee herself has been in love with a fantasy all along. Azula's secret life with their family is not the life that she intended to keep. For Azula would willingly traverse through the densest of forest as long as she reaches her goal.

And once she kills Zuko, Azula would be the Queen that she always aspired to be. And she would govern a world that thrived with lies, the world that Ty Lee would forever refuse to live in.

She left her because she wants to. Ty Lee just wants to be that one thing, the only thing truthful to her.

Ty Lee opens the door to her new home.

"I'm okay." She tells herself. But even that is a lie too. It is hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.

All along, their love is not about fate. It is timing. Azula did the right things in the right moment but even luck, even if you are born as its twin, eventually runs dry.

Or maybe it gets snatched away? Ty Lee does not know.


	5. Day Five: Wine

**005 Wine**

Solace is rare. In a world she has known since childhood with a father who killed for sport and a grandfather who destroyed lives, she did not really recognize the fact. For in the brilliance of wealth and prominence of her status, Azula is left to bask to the most valuable things in life. She attended parties for the famous, ate food from ten stars, wore diamonds as big as her fist. Father said she is meant to be at the top of the world, that she would certainly love the view.

"This entire city..." was his earliest lecture, variations of which would be imparted over the years. Sometimes, it was punctuated with the force of his fists, the harshness of what he called his concern as a father. Pain is weakness leaving the body, he says. Azula believes him.

"This entire city would be yours, my heir. You just do what I tell you to do. Follow my footsteps. And you will uphold the glory of our family name, the name of Sozin! "

As a child she had beamed, rejoiced, held on her Father's every word. It was her inspiration. It was her law. She relished the proud smirk on Ozai's face everytime the man he wanted dead was cleanly disposed of. She enjoyed every nod of approval in every other billion added to their riches. She took pleasure in his rare smiles, in his proclamations that yes, this was his daughter, words that her mother would not be caught dead saying.

Azula had tried to avoid the thought that despite everything, she is not happy. It was a frustrating exercise of futility. Every accomplishment felt empty. Every step closer to leading the gang did not bring the sense of finally reaching the goal she had worked for. Azula's life was never a straight line but it never bothered her until she felt lost.

Until she met Ty Lee, in her black and white waitress attire accepting tips from leery gamblers. Ty Lee in her cute dress suit applying for a job. Ty Lee spinning onstage dazzling viewers. Ty Lee heavily pregnant and about to give birth.

"What does this mean to you?"

"What kind of question is that?"

She held Ty Lee's baby in her arms and something in her just kicked in. Yoshino became the child that Azula regretted not being. The very epitome of the normal child she was denied to be in their family. And as the girl grew, she saw herself in her bright, curious, brown eyes and could almost pretend it is gold. They shared the same love for literature, similar disdain for dolls and a fascination for the world's history. But Yoshino does not have to kill a man at seven, rob a back at twelve, lead a gang of assassins at fourteen. Ty Lee is nowhere like Ursa and Azula likes to think that she is much better at this than Ozai ever was.

"You're the best mum in the world!"

Her little family becomes her solace. Her little family becomes her happiness. Azula had wanted Yoshino to enjoy her schooling because she never had a chance to properly do so. Azula had been okay with her eating candies at night, staying up late because those were what a child were supposed to be punished for by their mothers and not for successfully poisoning her first target. Yoshino is the child she never was. Theirs is a family a monster like her is never supposed to have.

Then Zuko betrayed her.

"Eliminate him." Ozai had been livid, more ferocious than she ever saw him. He was almost cornered by the authorities and the confrontation had not been kind to him. But even with his midriff heavily bandaged and his greatest humiliation by far physically visible, Father remained to be that one thing whose words made Azula's knees tremble. "You are distracted. You are losing it. Or else you would have seen this coming. You would have known that he has the makings of a traitor. Make sure you finish him. Or else..."

He did not have to finish it. He did not have to say it. But Father, the crime lord who turned his own daughter into a weapon, who could kill the most powerful man in the country with just an order, made clear of the already implicit threat anyway. "... I will personally eliminate what is distracting you."

That was as far as her inebriated mind can recall and it all spiralled down there. Her delusional, wishful plans for the future gone- that in retrospect, was not so airtight after all. Zuko was supposed to take Father's place. Azula was supposed to be free. Or at least, as free as she could be. And then she would make her own name. Not as a Royal. Not as a legacy to a century old gang. But just Azula. A whole new Organization that is much better than Sozin could ever dream of. It was the only life that Azula knew. It was the only life that she could live on. And yet the ungrateful bastard betrayed her trust, went with the Interpol all for the sake of morals that had no place in the forest she was traversing in. "This is not the life for me Azula." The idiot said. He even had the temerity to look like he cared! "This would not be the life for Izumi, if I have anything to say about it. You have a daughter. Are you just gonna let her take everything and let her suffer the life that we did?"

"Who says I would ever let that happen?"

"Who says you have a choice?"

Then Ty Lee left. She closed the door. Yoshino was in tears. Azula was too numb, too frozen to stop them. Ty Lee thought she is a monster too.

 _At least they are safe._ There is a voice in her head that suspiciously sounds like her mother. Or her own, whenever she encourages Yoshino that she can answer that Math problem. But she considers the pain in her chest to be another blow. Betrayal. Zuko. Ty Lee. They are both fools.

All this time, Azula had thought she was invincible. Azula had not feared anything. Then through Ty Lee and their daughter, she started to live. Really live. She wanted to live. And for the first time when they left her, she feared death.

The wine drowns everything else, burns in her throat. Azula feels her own chest constrict, her breath coming down to desperate pants.

Azula drowns with them.

Everything reminds her of the life that dissolved in her grasp. The table stained with the evidence of her excessive intoxication was once where Ty Lee and Azula would talk all morning about Yoshino's antics. The dishes are unwashed. Ty Lee's pink apron is gathering dust. Their little apartment is silent. The television is but a drone of mindless chatter as though Yoshino's absence have taken away the novelty of her favourite cartoons.

Ty Lee left, with their daughter. Their daughter!

Last time she saw Yoshino, her daughter look at her with those eyes. Those eyes!

Her father reprimands her. Azula does not hear. Azula has stopped listening.

Zuko continues to evade her. Azula does not know what to do with him anymore.

The Interpol...

The FBI...

Someone wants to kill her.

Someone wants to end her.

Everyone is out to get her.

Her father's empire is starting to collapse. The Avatar and his stupid Interpol allies are gaining ahead. Soon, all their family worked for would be turned to dust. Soon, it will all be gone.

But none of it matters.

Those who kill should be willing to be killed.

She swallows another shot in one gulp.

To Azula, love becomes a momentary lapse of judgment, like a mental illness. Or it might be a disability. The loss of Ty Lee feels like the loss of her dominant limb.

Because Azula can only conquer the world with one hand if Ty Lee is holding the other.


	6. Day Six: Denial

**006 Denial**

Yoshino cries every night in her sleep, sobs for a mother gone and the sudden changes in her life. Ty Lee took a job in the town's flower shop. She thinks she should be lucky. She thinks she should be thankful. Small towns are not exactly open to strangers that might be fleeing from a disgruntled husband or several other much worse things. But she cannot deny that it is not the life that she has been used to. It is not the life that Azula has given them. Yoshino only pretends to like the dolls that she brings home. Ty Lee says nothing about the beheaded parts she would find later that very day.

"I want mother! I want mother! I want mother!" There are those tantrums of course, as though the girl's apparent ire of their situation is just simmering over the edge. Ty Lee does not want to think of it but in every day that Azula did not come to their doorstep like Ty Lee always half-expected (and hoped) she would, is every day that Yoshino is beginning to drift away from her.

"I want mother..." And her earlier shrieks and anguished screams would eventually dissolve into wails so heartbreaking that Ty Lee just wishes, like she secretly dreams about, that Azula will finally find them.

There are two things that Ty Lee would hear in the news that she would have trouble believing in. And even that is an understatement. The time that she shared with her little girl in their modest home is also spent with an ear strained for any news about Azula. Yoshino has asked, demanded several times when they could come back to her mother and admittedly, Ty Lee had many a time almost taken a train to the Capital had the news about the extensions of Azula's deathly aim to terminate her brother is not so disturbing.

"Why Mommy?" That tone of sheer desperation should never be in any child's vocabulary. And yet it is. It is getting worse. Each day without Azula is each day that Yoshino, the daughter she has given birth to is starting to detest her. Each day without Azula are days that their family is slowly breaking. It is as if she is the bridge that kept them all together. It is as if she is the crevice that will separate them all.

She never has an answer why. She knows. But she does not want to say it herself.

She watches the news every night. She makes Yoshino go to bed early. She does not have the means to buy her candy anymore or new games for Nintendo or even books to divert the girl's imaginings to her much more lavish past. Zuko and Azula still are trying to eliminate each other. Ty Lee herself continues to cry in her sleep.

It is an ongoing showdown that only she can bridge the connections on. Ty Lee thought that the growing number of casualties that Azula thought necessary in retrospect has become a norm, that she can really do nothing about it. She wonders how she can still love Azula after all this. How she can still sigh in relief everytime the news concluded that Azula is well.

Until Zuko's death, no, _murder_ reached her.

"Isn't that...?" Her daughter has only met Zuko once. By chance. She is not aware of his relation to her mother but Zuko is not someone so easily forgotten. The scarred man had stood, raised one eyebrow at her. Even then, Zuko had been an imposing figure that exuded authority. He was an angry soul, she thought. And that was more dangerous than a cold, calculating one.

"Yes." Her voice trembles.

She orders Yoshino to her room when the more terrifying details are laid out. Azula actually did it. She has done it. To please her father, Azula has killed her own brother and hung his corpse for all the world to see, the words _traitor_ marked with lipstick that Ty Lee has tasted on her own lips many times. And it is then that Ty Lee realizes that Azula herself has morphed into a wrathful, vengeful entity, leading a far more perilous path than Zuko had ever trudged on.

That night, she can do nothing but sob in her daughter's hair. "Your mother is gone." Yoshino does not understand. And Ty Lee does not explain. Azula is gone. Azula is gone. And she is never coming back.

Ty Lee is never coming back.

Yoshino cries with her.

In the place of the woman she loved is a murderer, the monster that has stripped her own brother naked and branded him with words that should never be said in between siblings. Ty Lee was not sure but she did hope, did pray that somehow, someday Azula would find them again as the person Ty Lee and Yoshino learned to love. That Azula would do the right thing at the right moment again. Like when they saw each other in the restaurant while Ty Lee was about to deliver, luck would smile upon them once again. Trust is the only thing left in Ty Lee when she cannot do anything to stop them.

But...

_Trust is for fools._

But Azula is gone.

The second news almost killed Ty Lee. And she wonders if this is all a dream, if this is all a prank.

Mai has killed Azula.

Ty Lee does not want to believe it.


	7. Day Seven: Favorite Movie Quote

**007 Favourite Movie Quote**

Azula's death is the beginning of a downward spiral. Perhaps, it is always meant to be so. Permanence is the one thing that is definitely not in this world. Death is the only constant. And when Azula died, everything fell with her.

Azula has been her first kiss, her first fuck, her first everything.

Azula has been her first heartbreak, her first tragedy.

And she is there, nothing but a sack of bones, eventually to be burnt into ashes. Ozai faces the weight of his crimes, guarded twenty-four hours a day. The authorities rushed in to take him down the same day Azula died. Ty Lee heard that he tried to kill himself thrice already. She is glad he did not succeed. She knows enough about Azula's bouts of frenzied anxiety in every phone call to judge that he does not deserve the end that Azula faced.

Ty Lee does not think she would ever recover.

Mai had vanished from the face of the earth, taking her daughter with her but not before telling Ty Lee that she can come after her for revenge if she would like. "Azula did not harm Izumi." was her reason as to why she would not do to Ty Lee what she did to Azula already, if she wanted to atone to all the lives so much, why not kill the woman Azula loved too? The sitting room was in shambles. Ty Lee was a mess. Just a few hours after she learned of her wife's demise and here came her executioner pointing a dagger on her throat. "We were already even."

But the reality was left unsaid. Vengeance did not bring Zuko back. Grief would not turn back time and save Azula from her own destruction. Death is irreversible. Death is permanent. Ty Lee thinks that for both Mai and her, for both Yoshino and Izumi, the pain will be too. Ty Lee suspects that Mai coming straight to her after everything was the closest she would get to an apology.

Ty Lee almost, almost wrapped her fingers around the avenger's neck. But Izumi lost one parent already. She saw what it did to Yoshino as she let Azula get away, as she let Azula die. Ty Lee could not bear to do it to another innocent child, who already lost a father to a slavery of crime and violence.

Yoshino came home to her mommy sobbing, in the ruins of their apartment muttering the same words over and over again.

_Azula is gone. Azula is gone. Azula is gone._

Physically? Just a day ago. Mentally, ages ago. The one who married Ty Lee, the one who took care of their daughter is but a remnant of a child that was forced to grow up too early.

Yoshino came home to the news that her mother is gone. Forever.

"You know what hurts me..." She remembers telling Mai. Everything else is a blur of furniture in disarray and relentless tears. "I lost Azula way before you lost Zuko."

She was there in the autopsy, saw the severed head.

They told her that she died instantly, at this point the only consolation that they could offer to the wife of a now known Yakuza Princess. But even the clinical observation was delivered with such animosity, such resentment. They told her that she was intoxicated prior to being killed. They told her she had been too drunk to process the pain.

She was there at the burial. She was the only one who cared.

Ty Lee was interrogated left and right. The police were persistent in their belated pursuit of justice and Ty Lee would have been thankful if it was for Azula. To the world, the assassin who finished her was someone to be glorified. Ty Lee does not care anymore. She just wants to be left alone, for her to grieve in peace.

She does not let her daughter watch the news.

Yoshino traced markings on the headstone. Tears fell, crying out for a mother that would not hear.

The FBI offered to protect her, offered new identities. Ty Lee refused. For she would rather be Ty Lee. And Yoshino must stay as Yoshino. Because they were the only true, beautiful things in Azula's life and she would like to keep it that way.

Ty Lee holds the sobbing child's hand, unaware that she had been pressing too much.

Azula was her first love. And she knows then, that she would also be her last.

"I wish I know how to quit you." She says into thin air as her daughter heaves away the replenished batch of tears.

**(END)**


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